August 16, 2010, 6:01 AM EDT
By Saijel Kishan
Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Graham Capital Management LP, the $6.8 billion hedge-fund firm run by Ken Tropin, hired Pablo Calderini, the former head of equity proprietary trading at Deutsche Bank AG, as chief investment officer.
“We plan to hire about 10 traders in the next six to nine months with Pablo leading that effort,” Tropin, 56, said in a telephone interview.
Hedge funds have been hiring proprietary traders as the U.S. government limits banks’ trading with their own money. Nelson Saiers, a managing director for proprietary derivatives trading at Deutsche Bank, last month joined Alphabet Management LLC, a hedge fund that specializes in options.
Tropin said he had first approached Calderini about three years ago and that he was more “open-minded” about joining this time following the introduction of the so-called Volcker rule, which limits proprietary trading by banks.
There’s “a unique environment for adding talented and experienced traders as a result of the Volcker rule,” Tropin said in the letter.
Volcker Rule
Calderini joined Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank in 1997 as global head of emerging markets and helped run groups within the bank’s equities and fixed-income businesses, according to the letter. He had previously worked at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Deutsche Bank didn’t name a replacement for Calderini when he left last month because the remaining equity proprietary unit will be folded into the regular equity flow business.
Tropin started Graham Capital in 1994 and runs quantitative and discretionary trading strategies. The firm has about 165 employees.
Graham Capital’s systematic global macro portfolio has lost between 4 percent and 7.6 percent this year through July, depending on the share class. The discretionary global macro portfolio has climbed as much as 8.4 percent, according to the letter.
Industry-wide, hedge funds have gained 1.5 percent this year, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc.
--With assistance from Aaron Kirchfeld in Frankfurt. Editors: Christian Baumgaertel,
To contact the reporter on this story: Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net
From Bloomberg Businessweek published on August 16, 2010, 6:01 AM EDT
